A

Attitude Scales: They are made of any of the variety of scales that measure an individual’s predisposition toward any person, object or other phenomenon. These scales differ from rating scales in that they are generally more complex and multi-item scales.

B

Bivariate analyses are conducted to determine whether a statistical association exists between two variables, the degree of association if one does exist, and whether one variable may be predicted from another.

C

Closed-ended questions: Closed-ended questions can be answered with “Yes” or “No,” or they have a limited set of possible answers (such as: A, B, C). Closed-ended questions are often opposed to open-ended questions (see their definition below).

Completion rate : ratio between the number of respondents who actually complete the entire survey with the total number of respondents who enter the survey.

Consent of the person: Any expression of will, free, specific, informed and unequivocal by which the person accepts by a declaration or a clear positive act that the personal data concerning him are subject to processing.

Cross-sectional data: A type of data collected by observing many subjects (such as individuals, firms, countries, or regions) at one point or period of time.

D

Data collection software is a computerised system for the collection and storage of qualitative and quantitative data in an electronic form.

Direct Attached Storage includes types of data storage that are physically connected to your computer.

Disabled or handicaped person: A person with a disability is said to have physical, sensory, mental health conditions while a handicap is a physical or attitudinal constraint that is imposed upon a person regardless of whether that person has a disability.

E

Entrepreneur: It is important to define that term as building the conditions for the emergence of a new generation of African entrepreneurs is the heart of this research project. Hisrich (1990) explained that an entrepreneur is “someone who demonstrates initiative and creative thinking, is able to organise social and economic mechanisms to turn resources and situations to practical account, and accepts risk and failure”.

Entrepreneurship: According to Srivastava (2017), entrepreneurship refers to an individual’s ability to turn ideas into action. Entrepreneurship is therefore a combination of mindsets, knowledge and skills.

Exploratory research is defined as a research used to investigate a problem which is not clearly defined and is conducted to have a better understanding of the existing problem, but will not provide conclusive results.

External validity: In research, external validity provides information on whether the findings of a research project can be applied to a broader context in terms of situations, people, settings, measures, etc. It is opposed to internal validity (see below).

F

First generation entrepreneurial courses: As defined by this research project, they are courses centred on core entrepreneurial skills like finance, analytical and problem-solving skills, marketing, creative thinking, design thinking,etc.

Focus discussion groups can be described as small groups of people whose reaction to something (e.g., a company’s new product, a politician’s image, an idea, etc…) is being studied to determine the reaction that might be expected from a larger group of people.

I

Inductive coding is a ground-up approach where codes are derived from the data.

Informed consent, which after Kvale (1996) means making a reasonable balance between over-informing and under-informing survey respondents.

Intangible assets are assets that are not of a physical nature. Brand awareness, intellectual properties such as patents, trademarks, and copyrights are all intangible assets. So are business networks and reputation. Intangible assets contrast with tangible assets (see definition below), which include lands, vehicles, equipment, inventories, etc.

Internal validity is used in research to assess whether a causal link between the research objectives/questions and the outcome of the conducted study can be drawn. Only internal validity makes the conclusions of the research project credible and trustworthy. The guarantee of high internal validity is therefore very important for any project.

Interviewer-related error is a form of measurement error and includes both the bias and the variance created by interviewers when they can contribute to the data that are gathered in face-to-face and telephone surveys.

K

Know-How generally refers to the skills, abilities and knowledge that people have, especially their ability to do things. In the context of entrepreneurship, it often refers to the knowledge and ability to get things done within the company. This often includes techniques that contribute to success in business and give the company a competitive advantage.

Knowledge can be defined as facts, information, and skills acquired through experience or education, or the theoretical or practical understanding of a subject.

M

Multilingual surveys are surveys that can be distributed to the participants in multiple languages.

N

Network attached storage (NAS) allows for multiple machines to share storage over a network. One of the key benefits of NAS is the ability to centralise data and improve collaboration.

O

Open-ended questions: Open-ended questions are questions that allow someone to give a free-form answer.

P

Personal data is defined as any information relating to an identified or identifiable natural person directly through his or her surname or first name or indirectly through a unique identifier (in our case, for example the student number) or several specific elements specific to his identity (for example, year of promotion, profession, location). The identification of a person can be carried out from a single piece of data or from the crossing of several pieces of data.

Primary research methods: Methods that are used by researchers to directly gather data rather than relying on data from previous research.

R

Rating Scales: In that case, raters evaluate a person, object or other phenomenon at a point along a continuum or in a category. A numerical value is then assigned to this point or category. Rating scales are among the most widely used measuring instruments.

Respondent bias refers to the various conditions and biases that can influence survey responses either intentional or accidental.

Research reliability is the degree to which a research method produces stable and consistent results.

Response rate: the number of people who submitted their responses divided by the total sample.

S

Sampling error is the difference between a population parameter and a sample statistic used to estimate it. For example, the difference between a population mean and a sample mean is sampling error.

Scaling is the process of generating the continuum, a continuous sequence of values, upon which the measured objects are placed and scaling methods are divided into two main categories for, open questions and closed questions (Taherdoost, 2017b).

Secondary research is a research method that uses existing data. Existing data is summarised and compared to increase the overall effectiveness of the research.

Second generation entrepreneurial courses: In the realm of this research, they are courses that aim at providing Scholars with skills to influence their entrepreneurial ecosystem, manage pro entrepreneurial institutions (employers’ associations, export agencies, notably) or influence policies affecting entrepreneurship (private sector reforms, etc…).

Skills refers to the ability to use one’s own knowledge effectively and without problems in execution or performance.

Static data masking is used to protect data in test and development environments.

Statistical bias after Mills et al. (2010) is a general term used to describe a tendency to make a systematic error in thinking or reasoning. Examples of biases are selection bias, observer bias and participant bias. Selection bias refers to a situation where the respondent or participant responds to the questions based on what he or she thinks is the right answer or what is socially acceptable rather than what he or she really thinks or feels. Another case that may increase participant bias is when participants are opinionated about the sponsor of the interview, which could lead them to agree either to everything or nothing proposed to them. Observer bias refers to a situation where researchers unknowingly interpret data to meet their hypothesis or include only data that they think are relevant. They might, for example, ask questions in a specific order that could affect the participant’s response to the next question or ask leading questions that may prompt a certain response.

Stratified sampling is a type of sampling method in which the total population is divided into smaller groups or strata to complete the sampling process. The strata are formed based on some identified characteristics in the population data.

Study population refers to all the alumni of the two institutions of African nationality and having had professional experience in Africa represent the overall restricted population of the study. To the latter, we must add students who have graduated from institutions comparable to Sciences Po or AIMS in the countries where the study is carried out and who have had professional experience in Africa. This second population will be used to construct the control group. Combined with the restricted population, it constitutes the overall extended population. Not all individuals belonging to the various extended populations will give their consent to participate in the study, hence the concept of an extended population participating in the study.

Survey Automation is the automation of surveys through a pre-defined survey workflow.

Survey data processing is the crucial step following the collection of any survey data. Its purpose is to transform the raw data into meaningful results that can be analysed using any statistical software, and presented in a way that answers the research question posed.

Survey instrument development in survey refers to activities aimed at gathering preliminary information or testing the tools, design or methods, prior to beginning the research study.

Survey response rate is the number of people in a sample who successfully completed the survey.

Survey software are digital tools that lets users (sample members, interviewers or researchers) design, conduct, schedule, and publish electronic surveys, polls, and questionnaires for different purposes such as conducting market research, measuring customer satisfaction, and collecting employee feedback.

T

Tangible assets are assets that have a limited monetary value and usually a physical form. Tangible assets can usually always be traded for some monetary value, although the liquidity of different markets differs. Tangible assets are the opposite of intangible assets, which have a theoretical value rather than a transactional exchange value.

Treatment or processing of personal data: Any operation or set of operations relating to personal data regardless of the process used (collection, recording, organisation, storage, adaptation, modification, extraction, consultation, use, communication by transmission, dissemination.

V

Vulnerable groups are defined as Individuals that may, for various reasons, have a diminished capacity to anticipate, cope with, resist, and/or recover from the impact of a natural or man-made hazard.